In this ~40-minute-long video I walk and talk about the connection of living in the here-and-now while seeking pleasurable experiences. My points in brief:

• An explanation of what “hedonism” means. It comes from the Greek word ηδονή (hedony, pronounced as “ee-thó-nee”).
• Practical example of what “presence” is using my unscripted video presentation as a case in point.
• Presence lets us break the cycle of overthinking by acting.
• Action is actual: it always happens in the here-and-now.
• Presence is about recognising our humanity’s limited resources. Our time is finite, we always face opportunity costs (we face trade-offs), and we also are not omniscient. We fathom all eventualities in all possible scenaria: we thus act under these constraints and cannot afford to reach perfection before doing so.
• Extensive commentary on these questions
• If you are always present, doesn’t that make you always react to stimuli?
• If you are always reacting to whatever comes your way, won’t you be mindlessly engaging in the pursuit of pleasures (hedonism)?
• Having presence does not mean that we lose our knowledge and sense of direction. We still carry out purposeful actions. We thus are not reacting mindlessly to phenomena.
• “Pursuing pleasure” is framed as something inherently bad: basically, you just let your body dictate all aspects of your experience. This is a misconception.
• Why is the pursuit of pleasures equated with mindlessness?
• Examples of pleasure, such as enjoying the awesomeness of the great outdoors, and blotting out all the noise and irrelevant emotions induced by social media.
• Introduction to the concepts of “Apollonian” and “Dionysian”.
• Explanation how those set up a false binary.
• Long discussion on the multifacetedness of the human condition. We are body and mind, we have emotions and spiritual needs.
• We cannot deny our reality, such as to pretend that we are purely spiritual while being embodied.
• Connecting the threads between hedonism, presence, multifacetedness, and a moderate disposition.
• Closing thoughts with a real story about an introvert who wanted to be a sportsperson in their late twenties. I published that on my website’s “commentary” section: https://protesilaos.com/commentary/2023-01-02-re-play-football-introvert/.

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